Does anyone else feel pulled between two worlds? I love psychology. I get to start work in a “real” job in January as a kid therapist, something I’ve always considered doing “when I grow up”. I’m excited about that, and I have plans for getting a doctorate in something one day -developmental or clinical psychology, probably. But even then, I don’t know what I want to “do”. Research, teach, actually practice … the possibilities are endless.

But then I get on Etsy, read whatever interview is posted on the home page .. and all I want to do is be a hippie, and spend all my time pouring all my energy into creating things, which is something I’ve always loved doing. I’ve only discovered a love of psychology in the past few years.

Ack! So who knows. For now I’m having a great time knitting (just finished a Gryffindor scarf for a friend’s child, and I’m about to finish a blue scarf knitted from a pattern I made up based on a couple different stitches I learned online) until I start work in January. And that’s about when I’ll start studying for that bad old EPPP. Yikes.

One more thing -in more creative news, a handful of people have added the original set of 30 Rock Magnets to their favorites on Etsy … so that definitely fuels the fire for the crafty hippie life. Exciting!

For now, I’m gonna finish that scarf, and finish the holiday episodes of The Office and 30 Rock. I made it to season 6 of the Office tonight, and will probably save 30 Rock holiday episodes for tomorrow. There aren’t quite as many of those.

In closing, I plan on finishing, photographing and adding to the shop the Loves of Liz set of magnets tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted, all none of you who read this.

“A woman has uslurped my role as Santa!” – Michael G. Scott
Good night.

My original set of 30 Rock magnets featured Liz (carrying a box of wieners, from the time she “bought all the hot dogs”), Jenna (in a redneck/cowgirl outfit), Frank (in one of his infamous hats), Kenneth (wearing an eye patch, the way Tracy imagined him seducing his wife), and Tracy (talking about white dudes injecting AIDS into his chicken nuggets).

This is a shot of the original set.

The new set is still waiting for the glue to dry, so I don’t have any “action” shots of them holding stuff on the fridge. In the meantime, I’ve got a shot to upload that just shows the images used for the magnets…in case you wanted to see.

That’s right. We’ve got:
-Astronaut Mike Dexter, Liz’s fantasy boyfriend who turned out to be real, and a closet plushy.
-Dr. Drew, a painfully handsome pediatrician who lives in a good-looks bubble, aka Captain Hook[s], recipient of some really nice hand transplants.
-Carol, doorman to the skies, a killer dancer, and a fan of Liz’s brainchild, TGS.
-Gray, aka The Hair, who [unfortunately] turned out to be Liz’s third cousin.
-Dennis Duffy, the Beeper King and Dateline predator.
And of course,
-the [not really] one and only Wesley Snipes, aka Future Husband/Settling Soulmate.

Not pictured but also available in magnet form: Floyd, aka Flower Guy. Actually, I have a picture of his magnet…

Oh, Flower Guy. He was such a dreamboat.

Anyway. Once the magnets are finished, I’ll photograph them on the fridge and share the pic. Then they’ll be available in the Etsy shop! In the meantime, you can still order the original set pictured above. And stay tuned for a new set of various little-known but much loved characters, including Vlem, Moon Vest, and more.. in addition to new versions of Tracy, Jenna, Kenneth and Liz. I’m excited.

Next up: Scarves.

The Jezebel. Named after the Quiet Company song, Jezebel. If they approve. If not, then it will just be Jezebel, named from a name I made up, or heard somewhere one time.

<< This is a shot of the whole thing. Jezebel is great for weird Southern winter days when it’s November, but Mother Nature is having a “senior moment,” and it’s 60-70 degrees outside.

In other news, this is one I actually finished last year, and it’s awesome. It’s soft and cozy and really warm, and the shape is really fun to play with. It doesn’t have a name yet – but I’m open to suggestions.   

I really like how it wraps around your neck. When I was making it I wasn’t sure how it would look, but it ended up being really neat… which is, in my opinion, one of the great underused vague descriptors of things. Neat.

This one is another that I finished some time last year. I had wanted it to be just a little longer, but the skein ran out before it was where I wanted it, and I’d only bought one.. so it’s worn best by tying it in a loop instead of wrapping. But we also thought it still looked cute on the shorter side, soo.. we keep it around.

Anyway, that about wraps up the scarf action for now. There is one more buttoned neck wrap I couldn’t find when we were going out to shoot the others… and I’ll add a pic of that one when I get around to it. Probably after Thanksgiving. Yeah, thankfulness and turkey and scarves!

Knitting with my cats. If you look again at that picture, you’ll see Jet lurking in the background. Luckily he opted to not try to attack the yarn or needles while I was trying to photograph them. I know, I know,  cats and knitting are supposed to go together like white on rice, but as reality will attest, … cats will destroy knitting. I digress.

I bought a “teach yourself” knitting CD at hobby lobby a couple weeks ago. I already know how to knit and purl, and how to yarn over or K2Tog, etc. But I was hoping the cd might have more to say that I don’t know how to do, and that it would show me. Because it’s videos.
Well, it did.
It showed me how to knit stripes!! As in with 2 different colors of yarn!
Naturally, when you’ve just learnt how to knit in stripes, your first undertaking should be a scarf using the colors of your preferred House. And by House I mean Hogwarts House. Personally, I feel I’m a Gryffindor at heart.

Iiiiilove it.

The blue one is a scarf I started for Amanda last year and didn’t get around to finishing. I’m notorious in my own craftworld for starting things, but not yet known for finishing them. Not a lot, anyway. I do have two scarves to my name. I forgot to photograph those. I finished them last year. One of them has been gifted to my friend Megan (@megzlh154), but I keep forgetting to remind her to take it with her when she leaves my apt. One of these days. I HAVE almost finished this buddy:     

It’s a long, thin double rib knit scarf, made from this thick, fluffy Epais yarn from the Hobbs. I love love love this stuff. I bought a skein of Epais in a light/dark purpleish color that should be really pretty, too. This one just needs a liiittle more length.

In (what I consider to be) very exciting other news, I have visited a couple yarn shops the past month or so! One is Yarn Mart in the Heights, and the other is called Knit2Together, in Russellville. I’ve bought some fantastic yarns at both those places. I’ll photograph those another time to show all of you who stumble upon this blog. I’m not sure what to knit with them yet, is the problem. They’re too pretty and cozy to just ..make something haphazard. So I’m using my cheaper yarns to experiment with patterns to see which ones might suit the good yarns.

I’ll let you guys know when I finish these -especially the Gryffindor scarf. I’ve only got just over a month to finish!! Eeek. It’s too bad summer isn’t the kind of weather/time of year that inspires you to knit. Otherwise I’d have probably been all over this a long time ago.

In closing, here’s a picture of my cat sitting on Amanda’s scarf:

I know this method isn’t destined to be super reliable right off the bat, so I used a random penguin print fabric for a prototype. It actually went pretty well, too! It’s not entirely finished and I only have the top part “done”, but it ended up coming together better than I would’ve expected. I’ll post a couple pictures later when I find my flash card reader.

Yesterday, a friend of mine mentioned on her Facebook status that everyone should watch the documentary called The Beautiful Truth. Needing a break from my shirt prototype, I hopped over to Netflix and started watching. It was amazing and frightening.  I recommend it highly.

As a result of seeing the documentary, I found a juicer on Craigslist today, and I’m about to go work on today’s tangible– some vegetable/fruit juice combos. Hopefully I’ll drink them.

I’ve also started reading Charlotte Gerson’s book The Gerson Therapy, which is largely what the documentary is about. It’s fascinating to say the least. It’s cured lots of various chronic and acute diseases that normally “require” extensive and often dangerous treatments- and all it is is a healthy diet. It’s stringent and difficult to implement given today’s food standards (=crap), and essentially vegan. I’m going to see what I can do.

Wish me luck!

I love movies that make me want to make stuff. Example: The Science of Sleep. I love Stephanie’s felt creations and Stephane’s inventions, like the 3D glasses that make life 3D, and the one-second time travel machine. I’m particularly jealous of Stephane’s dreams. Mine are incredibly boring, and generally in black and white. At best, they’ll have very dull, muted colors. There’s only one bright, vivid dream I can recall, and it only lasted a few seconds. Boo.

Another that immediately comes to mind is Stranger than Fiction. The visualizations of Harold Crick’s constant calculations is inspiring. Why, I don’t know. But it makes me want to bust out a Moleskine and start doodling lots of nothings. My favorite part (artistically speaking) is the end credits. Those make me want to crank open good ol’ Photoshop (CS2, thank you very much) and seeing what kinds of pictures I can destroy -in a good way, of course.

Due to the nature of my creative habits, I don’t have time to start any right now. I like to start around 9:00 or 10, and work into the wee hours of the morning. When I stay up late, I become increasingly uninhibited, and I also get more ideas for creating things. Is anyone else this way? Now that I’m thinking about it, it reminds me of a book I’ve been reading for probably over a year, The Brain that Changes Itself. I actually finished it yesterday. The end told a story of a woman who was born without most of the left side of her brain. Now, if most of us lost the use of half our brain, it would mean all sorts of trouble, from personality changes to paralysis, depending on the area that was damaged. But since this woman was born without it, she had nothing to lose. The right side of her brain made up for what the left side would’ve done. She’s limited in her ability to understand abstract concepts, but she’s great with numbers and can walk and move and speak normally. It’s pretty fascinating if you ask me. But that story was a just a side note- sorry. The real point was this: when we have whole brains, the right and left sides interact with and balance each other. The balance also inhibits. Doctors who’ve examined that woman, for example, believe her concrete reasoning abilities are so strong because the missing part of her frontal cortex that would normally balance and inhibit that capability is missing. Sweet. Well, .. there are people who’ve had various parts of their brain damaged and suddenly became much more “artistic” than they were before the accident. Whaa? The damaged part didn’t balance the “artistic” part anymore – and therefore also didn’t inhibit it. The book references another which I’ve seen before and flipped through, but haven’t bought [yet]- Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The author recommends that people try to turn off  [or at least quiet] the left side of their brains in order to facilitate drawing.

I think that’s kind of what happens to me at night. I get tired, my brain stops functioning quite as well as when I’m bright eyed, coherent and well-behaved, and I become a little freer with what I’m doing. I also become a little more impulsive/inattentive. I have a hard time keeping at just one thing and will start another, then work back and forth between the two things. Then check facebook [multitasking, right?]. Then maybe gather materials to start something else, then finally decide that my eyes are crossing too much to keep going and expect anything decent to be produced, so I cave and go to sleep. I’d like to access that relaxed inhibition without being sleep-deprived, and preferably without any substances or Adderall.

On a related note, another book I’ve recently started [but have decided to wait until I continue, so that Lynn Ann Fruitcake and I can read it at the same time and have psychological discussions about the book's psychological  implications] is called Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. One of the cases detailed in the beginning is about a man [ a physician, actually.. maybe a neurologist? It's been a couple weeks since I read it] who got struck by lightning, had a near death experience with a bright light and everything, and after a couple weeks returned to work with no major damage done. He had a few memory problems in the weeks he was off work, but that was it. Well, a few weeks after that, he suddenly became obsessed with piano compositions. He started listening to classical music nonstop, and began hearing compositions in his head. He started taking piano lessons so he could play what he was hearing. It actually became so obsessive that he got divorced, which is sad. But the point is- how on earth? Sorry to spend so much time on that story without knowing anything else about it — but when I get further into it, if it explains anything else -I’ll report.

On another tangential note, I saw a 60 Minutes or 20/20 or something recently about a British man who’s mentally handicapped (I think?) and blind, but a savant with a piano – he is awesome. He goes around playing benefit concerts all the time, as well as playing at nursing homes for elderly people, many of whom have dementia and haven’t spoken in years, and his playing makes them start singing. How cute is that? And heartwarming.

Soo.. I think that’s actually about it for now. I apologize for the meandering stroll I took down unrelated roads. But what can I do? One of my nicknames is Tangent, after all.

I could take some of my excess lethargic energy (oxymoron) and put it out into the world … and in return, gain some free time in which I could pursue all these stitchtastic endeavors I daydream about when I should be sleeping (like now). And the listlessness I cast out into the world would go into someone who needs it- like a bad guy, you know. Just out into one of the everyday dudes who makes a living scamming people or something. Or maybe someone really bad to the bone, like Joseph Kony (leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, who captures Ugandan children and forces them to be soldiers in their army, committing heinous crimes against their own people and own families) or the angry pastor at Westboro Baptist Church- or any of their minions.

Wouldn’t it be great if the world worked that way?

Anyway. Crazy well-wishing dreams aside, please remind me to get on this later when I’m wrapped up in watching my 30 Rock DVDs again. Remind me that I’ve already got most of them memorized and it’s time to move on, and if that’s too painful (they’re my friends!!!), then to incorporate my love for them into whatever my hands should be crafting. Like more magnets.

For now: Lemon out.

But I’ve been daydreaming about making stuff when I’m done with the various school things on my plate.

While I’m in class, I doodle a lot. The doodles may not mean much to some people, but man, do they keep me company when I have a hard time understanding what particular counseling or assessment wisdom my professors are trying to impart to me. They especially keep me going when, despite feeling a sincere interest in the topic of discussion for the day, my eyes refuse to stop crossing, and my eyelids repeatedly droop to near-closing (only to flash open again and make unfortunately direct contact with the professors, who seem to always choose the drooping moments to address me personally with their helping lessons). So, since I haven’t made a post since before Christmas (shock, surprise), I thought I’d update you in this way. I generally take pictures of my doodles with my phone right after class (to text my sister how much I’m learning, naturally), so allow me to apologize in advance for the poor image quality. But this is all I’ve got right now!

These are small animals in the margins…. marginal mammals, if you will.

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In looking through these pictures, I did stumble upon a watercolor from early  January (before the semester started, mind you): I did make a few of those watercolors… I was happy with some, but not as much with others. I’ll probably make some more… later.

On a side note, I have a super-amazingly creative cousin who made me a creature a while back… I just got it today when my sister got back from visiting her. This is me holding the creature! I love it!Eek!

My cat, Jet, is already trying to eat Creature’s button nose off. :/ silly.

That’s all for now. This was an entirely procrastinatory post – I have comprehensive exams Tuesday. Depending on how those go, I might be having lots more tangible/blog time on my hands …! (But for my future’s sake let’s hope that won’t be the case)

I’m currently way in love with yarn! The problem is, most of the yarn I’m in love with, I have yet to see in person. I’ve only seen these yarns online in people’s etsy shops. But I love them. I want to get my hands on them because they look like they feel amazing.

I’ve been looking at a lot of crafting blogs, and that’s been a lot of fun [can you say "winter break"? It's been awesome]. One in particular that I like is Yarn Harlot’s site. She mostly talks about her adventures in knitting and spinning and dyeing yarn, and let me tell you, it sounds fun. It’s making me really look forward to the day that I finally marry rich [ha] and can spend my husband’s money on workshops, learning how to knit and dye yarn. Wow.

In the meantime, I’m knitting with Hobby Lobby yarns (which are nice, but they aren’t quite as friendly as these handspun fibres look), which are working for now, and finding patterns and other resources online and around my area.

In your meantime, you should just check out these beauties: TreasureAyland‘s yarn is beautiful!

This yarn is gorgeous, and all the other yarn in her shop looks just as wonderful. You can buy this yarn here.

This red and pale green yarn is actually the yarn of a woman who works around the Conway area; her yarn is also amazing. I feel like I’m overusing all these fantastical words like “amazing” “gorgeous” and “beautiful” .. .but that’s what these are! I don’t know how else to describe them. Might need to bust out the old thesaurus.. all that aside, though, :

Check this out. This lady is awesome. Check out her shop, The Twisted Purl. Good, good stuff.

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Well, the past few weeks I’ve been knitting almost non-stop. I’m currently working on a scarf for my cousin for Secret Santa Christmas, and I hope to get it finished today..there are only a few mail days left before Christmas! :/ I need to get on that. But. When it’s done I’ll post a picture. I got the pattern from the Lion Brand yarn website, and it’s working really well. I’ve only messed up a few times, and if you’re not familiar with the knitting process, I don’t think you can tell… I think. But I used some cute (and cheap) yarn from WalMart that is self-patterning (see the Yarn Harlot’s post about self-patterning yarn…it’s a good one!), and it’s making the scarf look pretty awesome if I do say so myself.. and I do. And soon  you will too.

For now, I’m about to go knit with some little oldie knitters in a nursing home nearby. I’ll let you know how that goes.